Abuse is defined as anything and everything that makes a woman unhappy.

Just because a woman is sweating you to get married, doesn’t mean she wants to be your wife. Very few men understand this. You have to carefully test to see if she really wants to be your wife, and even this isn’t perfect.

She was willing to try anything, anything, to fix their relationship. Anything except for being sweet and loving to the man she wanted to marry.

Somewhere out there is the man desperate enough to marry Lauren. He isn’t, however, a man with good options.

73 Responses to At least this story has a happy ending.

Most men will make their own lives and futures, and not rely on anybody else for this. They’ll forge ahead with their careers, look for good neighborhoods to settle into, decide on a group of friends they can interact with . . .

Yet one of the most important things is choosing a woman. There, most men quail. Faint at the thought of approaching a “strange” woman on the street.

Yet this is precisely what they must learn to do if they are to have a wide enough pool of suitable chicks to choose from. The enthralling liberation of doing this is equal to any oxycontin high or coke rush to the brain. Being a forward-seducer beats sitting on your ass every time.

If Hitlery “wins” the election, American and western women will be even more nasty. Any Churchianity woman who votes for Clinton is a CINO. Supports abortion, wants a war with Russia and Iran, does not like Christians. Everyone who reads Dalrock knows this.

My personal feeling is that marriage rates are in decline because of women like Lauren. They never truly break up and move on from relationships which effects their ability to bond with other men. The men seeing her sees a total train wreck and gives her a wide berth.

Lauren’s therapist or friends convince her that it’s entirely his fault and hence she never grows up.

Maybe he was kind of a jerk. We are hearing one side of the story. She keeps a record of wrongs. Clearly they did not get along, but it’s more like they didn’t like each other, there were no indications of epic fights.

But the most important point here is that Hierarchy and Power are defined as emotional abuse by the professionals. Make no mistake, if you believe in Biblical patriarchy, they consider you an abuser.

Will it someday be illegal to maintain authority in your own home, even with your wife’s consent?

“…emotional abuse is more common. It creates ‘a pervasive imbalance of power in a relationship’ said Jeffrey A. Lieberman, the director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The abuser uses manipulation, criticism, and fear to control the partner.”

“Several experts told me that if the relationship played out as Lauren described, it could be considered emotional abuse. ‘There’s a hierarchy,’ said Marissa Nelson, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Washington, D.C. ‘She was always in a one-down position.'”

I’d need to see his version of events. I’m sure that they’d be hard to reconcile to her emotional roller coaster. There are always two sides to a story involving two people, but in my experience the woman’s just tends to sound like a completely different story entirely.

Yet one of the most important things is choosing a woman. There, most men quail. Faint at the thought of approaching a “strange” woman on the street.

Yet this is precisely what they must learn to do if they are to have a wide enough pool of suitable chicks to choose from. The enthralling liberation of doing this is equal to any oxycontin high or coke rush to the brain. Being a forward-seducer beats sitting on your ass every time.

100% correct. Once a man can do daytime approaches, the reality that he can meet 50 new women in a week becomes apparent.

Even if he has sex with only a tiny percentage of them, the ability to do this is a transcendant feeling of power. 98% of men cannot do this, so any man who can becomes an elite man, on this skill alone..

I like how the Atlantic made a pretense of getting the boyfriend’s side of the story, but then were definite that he indeed was an “emotional abuser.” Nothing like a (flimsy) appearance of impartiality to put over your biased nonsense.

And let’s suppose that everything she said was true, and nothing that he said was true. What is striking, then, is how stupid she seems to be. Time after time, she’d try to “surprise” him or order something without consulting him, and HE CLEARLY DIDN’T LIKE THAT. She’d fish for compliments, and he wouldn’t respond, again and again and again. If he sees something that displeases him, he criticizes it. How dumb do you have to be not to figure out that a guy who’s reacted in a certain way to a situation is likely to react in a similar way to similar situations?

You don’t like the man’s personality? Fine! Don’t be with him! No need to kvetch to a reporter about how meeaan he is.

Finally, if anyone was being emotionally manipulative, it was “Lauren,” not the man. Whatever his faults, it sounds like he was at all times completely honest with her. He certainly didn’t swing between demanding marriage and whining about how sucky their relationship was.

“Working on the relationship” has taken the place of rearing children. If most women, by age 21, had children to rear and educate, that would keep them healthy and happy using their energy on something productive, rather than “working on relationships” and striving in meaning less careers that eventually mostly degenerate into a lack of “success”, again something that must be “worked on” and blamed on men.

1. There’s really a “same planet, different worlds” vibe to reading her story and the few of his comments included. He seems rather alpha – which probably attracted her in the beginning and looks bad in retrospect, so she now attributes those things he did as one of the signs that he was abusive even at the start.

2. I noticed they closed the comments after only 6. Wonder if that was because Dal linked it.

Good catches. The Ivy League degree is certainly in some fluff subject that reduced her utility to society, rather than increased it (even if her parents and taxpayers paid a total of $500K on her education from K-12 through Univ)..

I am certain that she did not pay for half..

This ties to the overall point about resource misallocation towards modern women, and how this massive malinvestment is the biggest bubble of all time. The vast majority of modern women are consuming a lot more of society’s resources than they are producing. The few who are net positives are dwarfed by the majority that are huge white elephants (and black elephants). Hence, the entire gender nets out to a resource sink in 2016 USA…

Sounds like a case of poor compatibility primarily. It sounded to me like he was the “good enough to give it a shot” guy and they then ended up dragging out a relationship that probably should have ended much earlier due to at least her not thinking she had better options (he seems to have thought that way, too, based on his actions). Usually that situation leads to resentment and bad relationships — people who think they have as good or better options don’t stay in incompatible or problematic relationships for extended periods like that, or make life decisions like relocation and so in the midst of that, really. He did dodge a bullet — marrying would have been a disaster — but he played a role in the problem himself, and in the future he needs to have more options so that he doesn’t feel locked into a relationship that kind of sucks.

Whatever his faults, it sounds like he was at all times completely honest with her.

This is probably what sent her over the edge. Honesty isn’t nice/doesn’t feel good/tastes like shit/doesn’t make her the center of the known universe/shows her to be as flawed as any other human being/removes the “special snowflake” gloss.

@ Daniel
“But the most important point here is that Hierarchy and Power are defined as emotional abuse by the professionals.”
I noticed that also. “The abuser uses manipulation, criticism, and fear to control the partner.” So…someone who uses power is an abuser? The hypocrisy is ridiculous…the very same psychologists and psychiatrists and counselors and pastors and teachers and managers and professors will use these very same tactics while persuading you that the power everyone else holds over you is illegitimate.

This is probably what sent her over the edge. Honesty isn’t nice/doesn’t feel good

Of course. One of the principles of Game is to not give direct, honest answers. Always be evasive, with answers that are either teasing or shady/dangerous…

Knowing that this is what women like (and that the skillsets that generate gina tingles in women are often exactly the opposite of what makes a man, say, an esteemed luminary in his professional field) might very well lead a man to conclude that most women are just not worth it. That is an entirely legitimate decision.

1) Takes work and they’re already money-losing activities and
2) A plurality of commenters will simply eviscerate a story in short order.

Major Media is like a movie: there is entire websites dedicated to pointing out Editing Errors or Plot Holes. A Comments Section simply acts as a de facto version. And it’s normally a bad thing for the Media group.

Justdoit, yes, but when the kids get bigger and need her less, she’ll be right back to “improving the marriage”. This is something that women of all stages of life have to be on guard against. I know ladies who I thought were utterly Christian in their thinking, but as soon as they didn’t have their kids to raise, they started trying to fill that void with marriage “improvement”. They are/were not married to perfect men, but the men are what they’ve always been, more or less, and the ladies never even complained until they had a little too much time on their hands. The therapeutic culture gives them the language they needed to twist his imperfection into abuse, and these women are deceived into thinking they’re owed something different than they’ve gotten.. Some of them are headed for a divorce, and I can see it coming, but I’m powerless to help. They are hell-bent on making their husbands their next project, and it’s not going to end well for the poor, hunted man who thought he was doing ok for the last 15 or 20 years. Not being Jesus, my hubby probably messes up a little (I’m just too busy with kids to take it very personally?), but honestly, I’d have to be either a liar or a lunatic to think he was abusive. Trouble is, that’s exactly what my friends thought of their husbands before the therapists got to them. I told my hubby before we even got married that I think the most terrifying words a man can ever hear are “Honey, we need to work on our marriage.” I still believe that. I’d bite off my tongue before saying it to my good man.

Actually, I should say “I HOPE I’d bite off my tongue before saying it to my good man”. Because I honestly don’t see how these ladies who should know better fell into that trap, and I’m probably not immune, either. “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.”

Once you become moderately skilled in approaches and smalltalk, you will be surprised how many women respond favorably, even to the average-looking, average-height guy. Remember, the act alone was its own source of attraction generation.

I dunno guys, seems pretty clear to me the guy simply couldn’t handle such an awesome, educated, independent, opinionated woman. Such incredible female strength is just too intimidating for most men. Remember what Paul Maxwell said?

We live in a time when women are outperforming men in many areas of professional and personal competency. And men have two choices: to find female strength captivatingly attractive, or to be insecure and intimidated. Real men love strong women, because God’s glory is beautiful, and “woman is the glory of man” (1 Corinthians 11:7).

I’m praying for all of you:

Jesus, give men the grace to see the beauty of glorious female strength. Give women the resilience to remain strong long enough for the right men to find them beautiful for the right reasons. And help men and women to fall in love with proven, genuine faith, which is “more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire” (1 Peter 1:7).

Time after time, she’d try to “surprise” him or order something without consulting him, and HE CLEARLY DIDN’T LIKE THAT. She’d fish for compliments, and he wouldn’t respond, again and again and again. If he sees something that displeases him, he criticizes it. How dumb do you have to be not to figure out that a guy who’s reacted in a certain way to a situation is likely to react in a similar way to similar situations?

In other words, he ‘s that guy who refuses to be manipulated or played like a puppet on a string. I know that guy. Very well, in fact. You’d think she would have gotten a clue and be appreciative of the fact that she had someone who knew what a tool she was, still put up with her, and tried to help her be a more honest, better version of whatever he saw of value in her in the first place.

But there really are women who do not have the stomach for a man that straightforward. They truly do view his utter inability to BS as abusive because -in her mind at least- an unwillingness to do that speaks to a lack of love on his part.

I was just strongly challenging my soon to be ex-wife today with how she could claim Jesus to be her Lord and still follow through with this divorce. She said my talk of that was an example of how I had belittled her over the years.

Disagreeing with her is belittling and emotional abuse. Challenging her with what is Written is the same. Amazing.

She’s going to learn all the wrong lessons from this. She was not “abused.” Even if we take everything she says at face value, it’s still not abuse. Then when we compensate for the fact that we’re only hearing one side, and she undoubtedly painted herself in the best light and him in the worst light, then the femporter spun that already-spun tale even more, I feel confident that they were just fundamentally incompatible and fell into the “Sunk Cost Fallacy.”

The fact that they went to couples counseling and the counselor sided with him is all you really need to know: they are spring-loaded to find male-on-female abuse, and even he/she wasn’t buying it. It was only whe she met with a counselor WITHOUT HIM TO TELL HIS SIDE, that she suddenly “realized” that she had been “emotionally abused.”

Now that she went doctor-shopping and got a “diagnosis” that absolves her of blame and transfers it to him, she gets to claim the coveted title of “victim,” which she may now leverage to “survivor.” Of course “survivor” implies strength and resilience on her part, when in fact it was her very lack of those traits that landed her in that mess in the first place. The likely result is that she will double-down on her mistakes rather than fixing them… only now she’s older, more jaded, and more banged-out.

Unfortuately, as Dalrock pointed out, if she is at all attractive some schmuck will come along to play “Captian Save-a-Ho” and provide her with her first ex-husband.

If Hitlery “wins” the election, American and western women will be even more nasty. Any Churchianity woman who votes for Clinton is a CINO. Supports abortion, wants a war with Russia and Iran, does not like Christians. Everyone who reads Dalrock knows this.

Oh, it’s going to be so much fun. Whether Cunton or Trump wins, it’s going to be good!

This man dodged a bullet. That lady is an emotional wreck. Being honest to women is now considered abuse.

They weren’t lucky like I was. They weren’t rejected 100 times in a row. Now they’re frivorced and I have a happy ending.

Welcome to the Hotel California.

…

“If Hitlery “wins” the election, American and western women will be even more nasty.”

At this point, if Hillary wins the election then children will start disappearing into unmarked vans at school. This year’s “October surprise” is going way beyond the election. God damn the Church for its silence, I was yelling about this child molestation stuff years ago.

Throughout all these stories is a blatant disregard for men’s humanity, need for love and respect. Our gynocracy, fuelled by The View, Sex and the City, Ellen and Oprah fail to take basic respect for the man into account and will continue the problem.

Hilary’s 3rd debate statement that she believes in the marxist/sjw concept of “Systemic” imbalance means a get-out-of-accountability free card. A vague, shifting concept that fuels the grievance, victim, government-as-savior mindset that will only result in more of the same until a shift towards masculine principles returns.

Feminism has couched the options as an either-or for women. Either your man worships you or you are stuck in a horrific relationship. Humans aren’t categorized so easily and there is much nuance. A woman that is poisoned by feminism (80% of them IMO) is coddled and manipulated to be testy, rebellious and disrespectful.

Even when they have their needs met by a hard-working, loyal man, their hamster will find something wrong due to the feminist media brainwashing.

On the other hand, men who adopt this ideology of either-or (either she obeys my every command or else she is a harlot to be cast out) has to develop nuance.

In most people’s defense, we knew some stuff was definitely going on. There’d be the occasional case/conviction, but we also just went through an age where there was good levels of mass coordination but a lack of leaving evidence. Now, well, they’ve all got Webpages and Twitter. They’ve left a massive paper trail we can follow. Plus, the rise of social media has completely changed the dynamics.

“#SpiritCooking” never hit the major media, with only some website denials, but it was one of the most natural, organic viral events to ever hit Black Twitter. That, mostly, is what has changed. Information suppression is a lot harder.

QUOTE: Justdoit, yes, but when the kids get bigger and need her less, she’ll be right back to “improving the marriage”

Perhaps, but there is the odd chance that the experience and being 36+ will have a positive effect. Even if there is a special remodel-OR-flip TV channel that panders exactly to her demographic of empty-nest housewife.

The little problem that I see with their relationship is that she enjoys planning surprises and wants to be loved and appreciated for the effort that she puts into this EVEN THOUGH he has made it clear that he does not like changes in his routine.

The big problem in their relationship is that they aren’t actually in love with each other. Everything he does and everything he says gets on her nerves, while he planned a career move to another city without even finding out if she was willing to move with him. When he made it clear to her that he was moving whether she came or not, and he picked out the new home without allowing any input from her, she should have known that their relationship had no future. If he had been in love with her, he would have asked her to marry him and move with him at that point. Moving in with a man prior to marriage is a very bad idea, but screwing up your career to move to another city with a man to whom you are not even engaged is crazy.

She was foolish to devote four years of her life to a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere, and he is a fool to think that they ought to be on good terms after he allowed her to waste four years on a doomed relationship. He should have broken up with her in the city where they met. At least that way she would have left the relationship with a job. Instead, she ended up with no job and no relationship and living in a city in which she had no ties.

What online sewer were you wading in to find that? That was the most cringe-worthy thing I’ve seen since the “Dear Woman” video a few years back.

Well done.

Sadly, we’ve reached the point where people actually believe that sort of thing… and they vote… and are allowed to call 9-1-1… and get hired for jobs where they get to interact with sane people… and we all have to pretend that they’re not bat-guano crazy.

I may have missed it but although the article tells us she that went to an Ivy League College, is competent in a Martial Art, helps out at DV shelters and is financially independent (i.e. has some form of work) nowhere does the article say that she is physically attractive. That missing detail, which is usually there for even the largest of land whales tells me – and despite her putting on twenty-five pounds – that she is not physically attractive either generally or to him. That is I presume where the problem lies: she settled, he settled too soon.

I refuse to watch yet another video with Zarna Joshi and am even more annoyed that she has an English rather than an Indian accent. What is she doing in Seattle (rather than England or India)? – other than abusing passing American males. Digging ever bigger holes is never a good idea: I too am Hugh Mungus.

I dunno guys, seems pretty clear to me the guy simply couldn’t handle such an awesome, educated, independent, opinionated woman. Such incredible female strength is just too intimidating for most men.

I’m with you. I mean seriously –

“[Lauren] has an Ivy League education, a black belt in tae kwon do, and experience working with domestic-violence survivors. She was financially independent.”

Lauren is the very model of a trademarked strong independent woman! She represents all that I’ve been told a modern woman aspires to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if her photo isn’t on half the SIW posters at universities across the land. And yet, and yet – this story in the Atlantic.

It just doesn’t fit. Why didn’t she dump that non-hacking chump long ago and stride boldly forward into her magnificent life? Bad ass chick like that, there should have never been a story here at all.

Spending 10 seconds skimming through that Zarna Joshi video….. pathetic. Look at how many manginas there are, willing to spend their time in this manner…

I maintain that the fact that no woman above a 6 in looks ever seems overly worried about ‘rape culture’ or ‘sexual harassment’, despite them being the ones more at risk, is a testament that this narrative is extremely bogus…

He should have broken up with her in the city where they met. At least that way she would have left the relationship with a job. Instead, she ended up with no job and no relationship and living in a city in which she had no ties.

Maybe he was aware of just how BSC she was and didn’t want to risk the fallout from initiating a breakup (if true, a sign of a very low-value man). He played it passively, letting her be the one to monkey-wrench things to a point leading to the inevitable end of the relationship. I don’t know, because like DrTorch upthread, I couldn’t stomach reading the whole article (as much due to the writer as to “Lauren’s” psychopathic nonsense).

But if you knew that you didn’t want to spend the rest of your life with the woman who was living with you, and you got a new job in a different city, wouldn’t you take the opportunity to leave the woman behind? Whatever breakup drama there is would be lessened by the geographic distance.

“Lauren” didn’t seem to have a great deal of insight into her own marital preferences. She was endlessly telling her friends how badly the relationship was going without bothering to leave. My guess is that she didn’t want to leave because she thought that it was time to settle down, and she was primed to “settle down” with whichever reasonable prospect came along at that point in time. He didn’t want to leave the relationship in the short term because his present needs were being met, and he had no intention of making it permanent, so he was willing to put up with her nonsense.

I will say, as a member of Team Woman, that Lauren’s emails to friends create a contemporaneous journal of his not-so-great behavior, and I find his denials less than credible. “I don’t recall having said that,” etc. He was inconsiderate to her, because he knew that the relationship meant more to her than to him. But she wasn’t married to him — why did it take her four years to figure out that they were completely incompatible?

Lauren’s emails to friends create a contemporaneous journal of his not-so-great behavior, and I find his denials less than credible. “I don’t recall having said that,” etc. He was inconsiderate to her, because he knew that the relationship meant more to her than to him.

I agree that he was able to act that way because he was less invested — that seems clear enough — and that he should have cut her off, and likely would have done if he thought he had better options.

However, almost no man is in the habit of keeping a contemporaneous journal — either in solitary way or by means of written or other communications with friends or other third parties — ablout what is happening in his relationship. Under that kind of standard, men always lose because they do not keep or share that kind of record, so it is held against them. That also happens in divorces, by the way, and it shouldn’t, because it basically holds typical male behavior — which is not to be constantly sharing with others about his relationship — against them in a credibility test.

You summed it up with the sentences, “She’s prepared to marry him. She’s not prepared to be his wife”.
Into the relationship, we can see the following
-She is putting on weight
– She is bagging him out to her “friends”
-She can’t take the slightest of criticisms
She makes no mention of their sex life. Is it possible, just perhaps, that his frustrations boil over with her because she is denying him?
Most men will put up with a lot from their wives. But when the wife becomes difficult and sex becomes a high wire act skin to defusing a bomb, they will draw the line.
I think that’s what’s happened here.

But if you knew that you didn’t want to spend the rest of your life with the woman who was living with you, and you got a new job in a different city, wouldn’t you take the opportunity to leave the woman behind? Whatever breakup drama there is would be lessened by the geographic distance.

Yes, indeed. Which is why I think that his behavior associated with the move was passive-aggressive. Instead of just telling her he was breaking up with her and moving on, he did things that he knew should have been enough to show her how much –i.e., how little– he valued their relationship (e.g., accepting the new job in another state and getting a new house without seeking her input), actions that would have told any SANE woman that he had no use for her and was kicking her to the curb. Yet she followed him and stayed with him even after being treated with such contempt/disrespect.

Some men reach the point where they are not only willing, but eager to treat the women in their lives with as much disrespect and contempt as they’ll tolerate, reasoning that if these women put up with it to the extent that they do, they must be craving it. Think of it as the gradual transformation of Billy Beta Nice Guy into Mike the Misogynist Douchebag. The guy is only responding to the incentives on offer before him.

“2. Just because a woman is sweating you to get married, doesn’t mean she wants to be your wife…”

True. What most ‘marriageable’ Western men today have to be continuously aware of, is that most modern Western women are not concerned about the marriage — what most matters to each and every one of them is HER wedding.
And instead of being your wife, she would much rather be your EX-wife (‘cash and prizes’ at the very least, don’cha know…).

Having believed I was the problem it’s taken a long time to realise I was the abused being spat on kicked punched and called names has wrecked my self esteem I think there a lot of men like me who are labelled I just got lucky I got a good coach who supported me and found a great men’s group for support who had been thru similiar situations

Rollo had a post recently titled, Please, Breakup With me! It seems to me that the guy was trying to get her to pull the plug without being the one to drop the hammer, but she was too tied up in the Sunk Cost Fallacy to take the hints, even when he clearly made arrangements to move away and leave her behind.

In any case, what he did was not “abusive” to her in the “Duluth Model” sense (not that the Duluth Model is right more than about 1% of the time anyway). He certainly couldn’t see a way forward with her as a wife, and he probably just got tired of her drama and wanted to be rid of her. Why didn’t he just ditch her? Who knows? It looks like he tried to get her to ditch him… maybe he thought it would be easier on her to let her be the one to end it.

“He definitely has a strong opinion, but so does [Lauren],” one of the ex’s friends told me. “I can’t picture a scenario where he would belittle her and she wouldn’t say something back.”

That’s the key sentence that sinks the whole article. There wasn’t any “abuse” as a normal person would define it. Just two people who didn’t really love each other but were unwilling to go through the effort of finding someone new.

Yes, I agree that it seems that he wanted her to be the one to end it, although at times he also seemed like he didn’t want the status quo to be upset — it seemed to suit him (maybe due to the sex?) even though he clearly wasn’t making long term plans for the relationship. This isn’t a great way to go about things. It isn’t abuse, I agree. But … it’s a crappy way to proceed and also not a very manly one. It’s passive aggressive and feminine.

I love how after just 6 comments that did not concur with Olga’s narrative, offering no sympathy for “her”, Olga closed the comments.

The day is probably not far off when these hack-ette journalist wannabes aren’t going to allow any comments at all (’cause feelbadz). Matter o’ fact, I’m surprised Olga allowed any. Even she should’ve been smart enough to realize that “Lauren” wasn’t going to garner any sympathy from anybody.

So not merely a Russian, but a Kazakh or Tatar. One would think she grew up outside of Western ‘feminism’. But she is still a ‘feminist’, proving that foreign women can rapidly worsen in the toxic psychological stew of Western ‘feminism’.

For those who think a foreign bride is a dramatically lower risk, caveat emptor.

I agree with the general assessment here of Lauren. Can’t picture her as Strong Independent Women (TM) if she has the time and the inclination to kvetch to The Atlantic.

With that said, I think there is some truth to her description of the ex.

For years, my mother thought I was being too harsh and critical of my in-laws. She thought they were kind of rough around the edges, but basically harmless. Well, the in-laws could usually hold it together long enough in a public place like a restaurant to give that impression. But to see how toxic they really are, you have to spend several hours with them in a non-public place. They will invariably show what loudmouth jerks they are.

So, when my mother finally spent several hours with us and them at our house for Christmas Eve one year, she got to see them in rare form. Afterwards, I said to my mother, “Do you now understand why I don’t like to spend time with them?” She replied, “Yep.”

I’m not at all surprised the ex’s friends say they can’t picture him doing whatever to Lauren, or doing it to the extent she claimed he did. People like that can usually hold it together long enough when there’s an audience. Otherwise, with two toxic people like Lauren and the ex, all bets are off. And I’ll bet anything that the dynamic between them was a lot like it is with my in-laws, where my mother-in-law is one of those people who just does not know when to STFU and when she’s pushed people too far.

No argument from me… even if we flipped the narrative and assumed everything in his favor, I wouldn’t think the guy handled things well (certainly not how I would have handled them – I would have cut her loose much earlier… in the unlikely event that I got with her at all). I dumped girls a lot less flaky than Lauren, and it didn’t take me four years to do it.

Having said that, it seems clear to me that Lauren is primarily the one responsible for her own heartbreak. We know the article is skewed in her favor, and yet she still comes off as being primarily at fault, while he comes off as being some combination of unwise and insensitive… but certainly not abusive. Since the article is written by a feminist and published in “The Atlantic” we have to assume it’s slanted at least 80/20 in Lauren’s favor, yet even then it looks like Lauren is at least 60% at fault. I suspect that if the article was non-biased it would look more like 80% or maybe even 90%. The guy was along for the ride… putting up with her drama in exchange for regular, no-effort sex. Weak, perhaps, but weak men are what women signed up for when they insisted that the last three generations of guys be steeped in feminism from the cradle on up.

The feminist zeitgeist that tricked Lauren into thinking that her modest credentials made her a “Strong, Independent Woman” (TM) is the same one that clears the dating pool of more suitable men. Feminists have used their considerable influence and privilege to emasculate the last three generations of boys and men – what kind of men did they think were going to be available to their daughters by the second decade of the 21st Century?

@Laura:I will say, as a member of Team Woman, that Lauren’s emails to friends create a contemporaneous journal of his not-so-great behavior, and I find his denials less than credible. “I don’t recall having said that,” etc.

Perhaps, but 1) men don’t obsessively “journal” every little thing about a relationship in order to regurgitate it all to their buddies, and 2) he probably could see that he wasn’t about to get a fair shake on this from a female writer from the Atlantic, so why play her game and provide her more fodder?

Like someone said above, and as a “counseling survivor” myself, I find the admission that in JOINT counseling the counselor, who obviously heard both versions of this tale, found favor in him quite compelling. This is a rarity.

In fact, it was such a surprise to Lauren that, to keep her mental narrative intact, she went counselor-shopping alone in order to maintain her side of the story and find her validation. I find that fact compelling as well.

What I find interesting about this story is that NEITHER of the two parties is alleging that the relationship soured over money, sex, children, in-laws, religious differences, substance abuse, mental health issues, etc. Lauren thought that they were well matched as a couple, and the boyfriend did not disagree.

It looks to me as though each was trying to use and manipulate the other. She thought the relationship would lead to marriage and children, and ignored obvious signs that he was not as interested in her as she was in him. He probably knew within a few months of knowing her that he was never going to marry Lauren, but he never told her the truth because he liked her well enough as a live-in companion. He appeared to want the relationship to continue as it was until he found someone he liked better.

There is nothing newsworthy about these two, as there are millions of similar couples throughout the Western world. But modern “dating” is very gritty. Lauren is angry and upset, but prior to 1965, this sort of thing happened to very few women because it was extremely difficult for a man to find a woman who would agree to live with him outside of marriage. I would say that prior to the mid 1980s, few middle-class women would have agreed to live with a man for more than a year or so without some sort of marriage timeframe having been spelled out.